Field
Subject matter disclosed herein relates to techniques involving a structural relaxation (SR) phenomenon for establishing an increased resistance of a reset state of phase change memory.
Information
Phase change memory (PCM) may operate based, at least in part, on behaviors and properties of one or more particular phase change materials, such as chalcogenide glass and/or germanium antimony telluride (GST), just to name a few examples. Crystalline and amorphous states of such materials have different electrical resistivities, thus presenting a basis by which information may be stored. The amorphous, high resistance state may represent a stored first binary state and the crystalline, low resistance state may represent a stored second binary state. Of course, such a binary representation of stored information is merely an example: PCM may also be used to store multiple memory states, represented by varying degrees of phase change material resistivity, for example.
Research on alternative phase-change materials having improved properties in terms of reliability and performance has led to studies of various alloys and compositions of a GeSbTe ternary diagram, for example. Though certain compositions may lead to such improved reliability and/or performance, a margin of resistance, or programming window, between set and reset states may be adversely reduced compared to margins of other phase-change materials. Such a reduced programming window may lead to a narrower readout margin between set and reset states. A PCM having a reduced programming window may experience a greater number of read errors compared to PCM having a larger programming window.